"The Future Isn't A Chat Box" Inside the Product Discovery & Agentic Commerce Brain of Michael Tutek

"The Future Isn't A Chat Box" Inside the Product Discovery & Agentic Commerce Brain of Michael Tutek

Agentic shopping is already here. While Shopify rolls out things like the global catalogue, UCP and Agentic Channels, some platforms are already a couple of years into that journey. Michael Tutek is one of them. I remember loading up the Arc'teryx site one day and there it was - an AI shopping assistant, live and working, while most of the industry was still writing think-pieces about whether this stuff was even real. Michael is the founder and CEO of Preezie, the guided-selling and agentic commerce platform working with brands like Puma, Lorna Jane and Arc'teryx. He started on the sales floor at The Good Guys, clocked that 30% of in-store visitors bought something against barely 1% online, and has spent the best part of a decade trying to close that gap. We get into why Michael thinks a chat box bolted onto your store isn't the future, and why agentic commerce is. Plus how you stop an AI assistant confidently making things up, why feeding it your old human chat transcripts can make it worse not better, and the out-of-stock feature that's worth 20-30% of the whole tool's value on its own. We also get into why Michael flatly refuses to build products that try to change shopper behaviour. This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com [http://thesupportheroes.com]. Also brought to you by Product Pelican (https://apps.shopify.com/product-pelican [https://apps.shopify.com/product-pelican]), the native PIM for Shopify. Michael's whole point is that good AI starts with good data - Product Pelican keeps your catalogue clean and consistent at scale, so whatever you bolt on top of it, agentic or not, has something solid to work with. Install it from the Shopify App Store. In this episode: * From throwing-water-on-your-face mornings to The Good Guys sales floor: the 30% vs 1% insight that started everything * Why Preezie pivoted from e-commerce quizzes to a full agentic shopping platform after one day with Microsoft * The case against conversational commerce: why agentic beats a chatbot box * Keeping AI honest: onboarding it like a new hire, and why your old human chat logs can make it worse * The out-of-stock play worth 20-30% of the tool's value on its own * Why it still matters to let shoppers scroll through 10 pages of products * Turning real shopper questions into user-generated FAQs for SEO and GEO * Why Michael refuses to build products that try to change shopper behaviour * The roadmap: an "e-commerce brain" built natively for the AI era YouTube chapters: 00:00 — Cold open: agentic shopping is already here 01:51 — From bricklayer's son to The Good Guys sales floor at 14 03:19 — The 30% vs 1% conversion gap that started the obsession 04:44 — Quizzes first, then Microsoft's tap on the shoulder about AI 07:04 — Spotting Preezie live on Arc'teryx before anyone else had it 07:48 — Sit and wait, or do something: why agentic beats conversational 10:30 — The out-of-stock feature worth 20-30% of the tool alone 13:40 — Training AI like a new hire, and performance reviewing it 16:56 — Killing support tickets with a mini AI on the contact form 18:12 — How much instruction is too much (it depends on the brand) 20:37 — Turning shopper questions into content: transcripts, FAQs, SEO and GEO 23:59 — Why the paradox of choice means discovery isn't going anywhere 28:17 — Don't try to change shopper behaviour: the electric car test 31:19 — The roadmap: building an e-commerce brain for the AI era 32:01 — Wrapping up

"By the time they realise it's usually too late" - Support For Shopify Apps with The Support Heroes

If you've tuned into The Shopify App Show, you'll know that The Support Heroes have been great supporters of the show, and also great supporters of Shopify Apps all over the world. When they approached me to sponsor the show, I couldn't have thought of a better fit. The Shopify App Show is all about showcasing independent apps, founder-led businesses who have built their business from the ground up. And for those who are successful enough to hit scale, maintaining a customer support team who can deliver as good a service as the founders of the business is nearly impossible. That's where The Support Heroes come in. So I thought it was worth catching up with Anggy from The Support Heroes to talk about how they work, where they fit in and what they do for Shopify app developers all over the world. It's a bit of a different format to our usual episodes, but if you're an app founder, this one is for you.

Picking Up Shopify Editions, Sidekick Apps & Uber Eats for Shopify with Emili Horncastle of Zapiet

Shopify Editions is basically tech's twice-yearly keynote moment now. The Everywhere Edition dropped 150+ updates, and landed on the same day I'd booked Emili Horncastle of Zapiet, so we hit record three hours later and got the early takes while the dust was still settling. Emili's the real deal: Zapiet invented store pickup and local delivery on Shopify! She now runs six apps including Zapiet Eats (you guessed it, basically Uber Eats for Shopify). We get into what Editions actually means for developers - why Sidekick makes good UX more important, not less, the gap between cool catalogue-API demos and genuinely useful experiences, and the glaring silence around the online store and themes. Then we go deep on Zapiet Eats: how it lets restaurants ditch the brutal Uber/DoorDash margins for their own loyal customers, why one app became six, the new Shopify billing API and per-order pricing, and the Zapietosaurus - the dragon-meets-T-Rex mascot Emili designed that kids now drag everywhere. If you build apps and you're trying to work out where to actually point your energy after Editions - and after the Mantle news - this one's for you. This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes [https://thesupportheroes.com] - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com [http://thesupportheroes.com]. In this episode: * Editions three hours in - Sidekick, the catalogue API, and why "everywhere" is the whole point * The Sidekick paradox: why AI-driven setup makes clean UX and consistent terminology more critical * What Editions left out - nothing for the online store or the theme ecosystem that's still most merchants' lifeblood * The Mantle wind-down, the scramble to replace it, and rebuilding reporting in-house with AI * The new billing API - per-order vs percentage, and why Zapiet won't take a cut of every order * How one app became six, and why merchants need a bike, not a rocket ship * Zapiet Eats: restaurant ordering on Shopify, ditching aggregator fees, and pulling Wendy's onto the platform * The Zapietosaurus - and why a dragon-T-Rex mascot matters more than you'd think YouTube Chapters 00:00 — Editions drops: early takes, and why we recorded three hours later 02:17 — Emili joins: 150+ updates and what excites a developer 04:47 — Inventory, catalogues and metafields: faster data processing 06:23 — The Sidekick paradox: why UX and terminology matter more, not less 09:30 — Getting app data into Shopify reports (so Sidekick can find it) 10:48 — The Mantle wind-down and what app developers do now 14:43 — Mantle, the dev dashboard, and rebuilding reporting in-house 15:40 — The new billing API: per-order vs percentage pricing 18:43 — Why Zapiet won't take a percentage of every order 20:31 — Zapiet's origins: pioneering pickup and delivery on Shopify 23:07 — One app becomes six: giving merchants a bike, not a rocket ship 26:03 — Zapiet Eats: restaurant ordering and ditching aggregator fees 30:55 — The real cost of Uber Eats fees for restaurants and diners 33:54 — The Shop app, Shop Minis and untapped potential 36:00 — Token bills, vibe coding and racing your co-founder 36:26 — The Zapietosaurus: designing a dragon-T-Rex mascot 39:38 — A 300-year-old store, kids, and a mascot that took on a life of its own 41:27 — Wrapping up

The Plankton of E-commerce: Product Metafields & Data with Ole Thorup

Product data is the plankton of ecommerce — the bottom of the food chain that everything else feeds on. Your content, your search rankings, the LLMs, the marketplaces: they're all eating what's at the bottom. Feed them junk, get AI slop. Few people understand this better than Ole Thorup, who built Accentuate Custom Fields as a solo developer back in 2016 — when metafields were just strings and booleans. Ole's also just launched Kairos Protect [https://www.kairosprotect.com/#] — bot detection and checkout protection that keeps card testers and price scrapers out of your store and out of your analytics. If you've ever fought with a 30,000-product catalog, managed product data in a spreadsheet you're scared to open, or wondered how the merchandising teams at big stores actually do it — this one's for you. We've put together a playbook to go with this episode: Your Shopify Products Are Being Read By Machines [https://theshopifyappshow.substack.com/p/your-shopify-products-are-being-read]. Find it on Substack, and if you're not subscribed yet — do the thing. This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes — dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com [http://thesupportheroes.com]. And if you're talking product data, you should be managing yours properly. Product Pelican [https://apps.shopify.com/product-pelican] is a native PIM for Shopify — manage and audit your entire catalog at scale, with missing data, broken images and SEO gaps flagged before your customers find them. Install it from the Shopify App Store. In this episode: * Building Accentuate in 2016, when metafields were strings and not much else * Growing to 20,000+ merchants and the Shop Circle exit * How Live Metafields works (and the lesson about not over-engineering) * Conversion and merchandising use cases merchants love * Metafields as the trigger for Shopify Flow automations * Inventory, ERPs, PIMs and getting data into the right shape * AI, MCPs and where apps still win * Kairos Protect: bots, card testing and checkout protection Chapters: 00:00 — Why product data is the plankton of ecommerce 02:27 — Building Accentuate in 2016: strings, booleans and stringified JSON 07:12 — 20,000 merchants and the Shop Circle exit 07:59 — Live Metafields: data that updates itself 11:37 — Use cases: bestseller collections, conversion data, review filtering 14:21 — Metafields as Shopify Flow's biggest unlock 16:38 — Warehouse stock vs store stock: the inventory puzzle 18:37 — The Omnibus directive: boring stuff, solved for you 20:05 — ERPs, PIMs and 30,000-product catalogs 22:09 — Shopify's Claude and ChatGPT apps: threat or opportunity? 24:35 — A crowded App Store and why service wins 30:02 — Kairos Protect: bots, card testing and checkout protection 33:00 — Wrapping up

Accept All Cookies: Making Compliance Fun With Elena Tsacheva from ConsentMo

Compliance. It's the 4PM Friday conference slot that clears the room faster than a fire alarm. But get the right person talking about it and suddenly it's actually kind of fascinating. Elena Tsacheva from ConsentMo is that person — she makes cookie banners and GDPR regulations genuinely watchable, and she's built one of the most sophisticated consent platforms in the Shopify ecosystem to back it up. We get into why 20 US states now have their own privacy laws (and why that number keeps climbing), what's actually broken about the vibe-coded cookie banner approach, and why Shopify's built-in banner is fine right up until it isn't. We also discuss * the Digital Omnibus directive * why compliance and AI are increasingly at odds with each other * why the future of consent might not involve cookie banners at all. Outside the product, we hear about running team brainstorms in a toddler café, dressing for Paris Fashion Week at an e-commerce conference, and getting surprised with a birthday cake by the Zapier team in the middle of the Wide event. We've put together a Compliance Playbook [https://open.substack.com/pub/theshopifyappshow/p/why-compliance-in-e-commerce-is-good?r=4s8na6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true] to go with this episode. Search for The Shopify App Show on Substack. And if you're not already subscribed, do the thing — like, subscribe, share, all of it. This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes — dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com [http://thesupportheroes.com]. Checkout Consentmo [https://www.consentmo.com/] for your privacy compliance needs, and for Price Tracking compliance, check out one of my apps, Omnibus Owl [https://omnibusowl.com/en/]. And most importantly, we featured my daughter's cookie business, Sophies Cookies [https://sophiescookies.shop/], on this episode. YouTube Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction 01:29 — Making compliance content people actually watch 03:12 — What ConsentMo actually does (it's a lot) 06:56 — What drives the roadmap — and what gets a hard no 10:02 — Saying no: the art of not shipping everything 13:34 — Will merchants just vibe code their own cookie banner? 16:19 — Why hasn't Shopify just built all of this? 20:35 — Why human support still matters (especially in compliance) 21:32 — What's next: Germany's cancel law and the Digital Omnibus 25:16 — Will cookie banners eventually disappear? 27:00 — Martin's daughter's cookie website makes an appearance 27:38 — The Wide Paris event: fashion week for e-commerce 31:12 — Wrapping up